GARDINER -- Beauty is at the heart of the arguments about the proposed 349-home Awosting Reserve subdivision beneath the landmark white cliffs of the Shawangunk Ridge.
It's the same beauty that attracts a half million visitors to the ridge every year that makes the spot so lucrative for homes -- and that has so many people riled about the proposed ''conservation community.''
The subdivision would dot a 2,660-acre slope in the towns of Gardiner, Shawangunk and Wawarsing. It would include a 296-acre golf course around Tillson Lake, and protect 1,400 acres of forest in two main blocks.
The project is billed as rustic and attractive, in the spirit of old Adirondack Mountain camps. Homes likely would have price tags in the millions of dollars and be big -- most as big as 4,500 square feet.
They would be designed according to strict guidelines meant to shield them from view -- but not completely from view, neither from the valley below nor the ridge above.
''I think that there will probably be several points that something will be visible from,'' Awosting Reserve President Roger Beck said, ''but I can't tell you that until the analysis is done.''
The developers demonstrated the techniques they are using for the visual impact analysis earlier this month at a public meeting for town officials and other interested people. Hundreds showed up, most -- if not all -- opposed to the development.
Slides that illustrated a virtually indistinguishable change on the landscape in a view from one prominent valley spot, and another showing Awosting Reserve was invisible from a lookout on the cliffs, were not meant to prove the development will be invisible, Beck said.
State to review plans
Just how visible they are and how much visibility is acceptable will be hashed out as part of the State Environmental Quality Review Act process.
Dates have not yet been set for public hearings at which the Department of Environmental Conservation will hear what environmental concerns, including visual impact, residents want scrutinized.
Paul Muessig, a Gardiner resident and member of Save The Ridge, which opposes the development, said there are several views that would be ruined by the project, including from Hamilton Point at Minnewaska State Park Preserve.
''There is a trail on that side of the ravine and you would see directly down onto the top of the development, unobstructed,'' said Muessig, a senior environmental scientist at EA Engineering Science & Technology in Newburgh.
